Christmas - System1 Group

Christmas Ads

Christmas ads are back, spreading festive cheer from the first teaser to the multi-channel Christmas crescendo throughout the AD-vent season.

As familiar faces return to our screens, LinkedIn feeds sparkle with holiday spirit, and brands battle for a place atop the consumer ad tree, we’ll be filling your stockings with Star Ratings, Distinctive Stand-Outs, Consistency Champions, and never-dull creative highlights powered by insights from System1’s Test Your Ad platform and the Competitive Edge database.

For insights and the latest from Santa’s effectiveness elves, check back here for festive brilliance throughout the Christmas season!

Creative Effectiveness Solutions

Want the full picture across all 100,000+ ads?

Test Your Ad Competitive Edge is the open creative effectiveness database of more than 100,000 ads, giving brands a real-time view of their category and inspiration from best-in-class creative. See how every Christmas ad, and every ad in your category, stacks up.

Pre-Test Your Creative

System1’s
Test Your Ad platform
is the world’s most predictive ad test, rooted in emotional response from real consumers. Test Your Ad helps you predict and improve the commercial impact of your advertising so you can get the most from your Christmas campaign. Contact us today to start testing storyboards, animatics, rough cuts and more.

Benchmark Against Your Category

With insights from 100,000+ ads, 
Test Your Ad Competitive Edge
 is the world’s largest database of emotional norms. Updated daily with new campaigns, it delivers predictive performance reports for each new TV ad in the US and UK, available from 24 to 48 hours of airing. 

Explore a constantly growing and up-to-date picture of various categories, benchmark against norms and be inspired by best-in-class creative for Christmas, the Super Bowl, World Cup, and more. 

How to Create a Winning Christmas Ad

Balance festive emotion with commercial impact. Christmas ads need to do more than tug at the heartstrings. The strongest creative balances long-term brand building with short-term sales impact, creating an emotional connection that can drive both immediate purchases and future brand growth.
Tell a story that takes viewers on an emotional journey. The best Christmas ads build a narrative with a clear beginning, middle and end, using emotional peaks and surprises to keep audiences engaged. A well-crafted story can create a memorable festive moment that stays with viewers long after the ad ends.
Make your brand unmistakable. One of Christmas advertising’s biggest risks is that audiences remember the story but forget the advertiser. Introduce distinctive brand assets early and reinforce them throughout, whether through familiar characters, packaging, music or visual cues. Don’t rely on a logo in the final frame to do all the work.
Stand out from the festive crowd. Christmas advertising is full of emotional storytelling, making it easy for brands to blend into a sea of sameness. Build on what makes your brand distinctive rather than following familiar festive formulas, and use consumer insights to understand whether your creative genuinely sets you apart.
Build on what already works. You don’t need to reinvent your Christmas campaign every year. Familiar characters, recurring stories and established brand assets can build recognition and strengthen the emotional connection over time. Consistency can be just as powerful as novelty when it keeps your brand distinctive.
Don’t rely on social media reactions alone. The loudest online opinions don’t necessarily reflect how your wider audience feels. Pre-testing gives you a more representative view of emotional response, helping you understand what resonates with consumers rather than relying on subjective feedback or internal opinion.
Test before you commit spend. Christmas campaigns often involve substantial production costs and concentrated media investment during a critical trading period. Testing scripts, animatics and rough cuts before launch helps identify what’s working, where your brand could be more prominent and which creative routes have the greatest potential. With System1’s Test Your Ad, you can measure emotional response, predict short- and long-term effectiveness, and refine your creative before your campaign goes live.